The Council of Grand Justices’ landmark ruling in May that a ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional demonstrates Taiwan’s increasingly progressive stance towards LGBTQ rights and anticipates Spectrosynthesis — Asian LGBT Issues and Art Now, an exhibition currently on view at Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA, Taipei).
The exhibition, which runs until Nov. 5 and features 51 works by 22 artists from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, the US and Canada, displays paintings, installations, videos and sound recordings about the history and life stories of LGBTQ people in the “greater Chinese community.”
Photo courtesy of MOCA, Taipei
PHALLIC ART
The male member is possibly the most privately cherished and publicly reviled body part. And yet it would seem to be the most celebrated asset of the LGBTQ community.
Martin Wong’s (黃馬鼎) Mi Vida Loca (我的瘋狂人生) is, to put it bluntly, a huge cock-and-balls painting within an ornate, grandiose frame. Towering over the viewer, the sculpture represents physical interactions and exchanges, the stars in the background implying the hopes, desires and dreams of an often isolated community.
Hsi Shih-Pin’s (席時斌) Buck of Freedom (自由之鹿) installation is a metallic creature of silver and gold that seems both grand and grotesque. At the exhibition opening he points out the blue pistol between the buck’s hind legs and says the merging of these different parts symbolizes the synthesis of our image and idea of identity that can appear violent yet fascinating.
SEEING THEIR VOICE
There’s more, howerver, to the exhibit than aesthetic penises, embodying an ongoing dialogue between the LGBTQ community and broader society.
Some of the artworks show pained past experiences, such as Xi Ya Die’s (西亞蝶) Chinese paper cut series that gives us a glimpse of his personal journey from internal shame to later discovery of his freedom and self-expression.
Su Hui-yu’s (蘇匯宇) somber and dreamlike video Nue Quan (虐犬) was inspired by a well-known murder case in Taipei 16 years ago, which the media relentlessly sensationalized due to the unusual circumstances surrounding the crime involving cybersex, homosexuality and S&M. The video invites viewers to ponder the case and reflect on their feelings about the sexual practices it depicts.
QUEER DREAMS
Some works drift towards the eccentric. Wang Haiyang’s (王海洋) Wall Dust (牆上的塵埃) is mesmerizing in its surreal fantastical animation, as the soft pastel animation plays out absurd and sexual scenes.
Observing the dreamlike paintings of the late Ku Fu-Sheng (顧福生) with men floating nude through their surroundings in Blue Sky (青空), Poppy Dream (罌粟夢) and Resting Place (休息站), I recall what it means to be naked in your dreams, whether that be a sense of insecurity or freedom. Our clothes identify us, but also conceal who we are. Perhaps there is some freedom in being laid bare, free of fabric constraints, allowing the world to witness the naked truth.
By contrast, one of his paintings, The Room at The Top of the Stairs (秘密房間), is hung within its own room that can only be viewed through a window, distant and out of reach. The two men in the painting stand facing away from a bed, undressed and unmoving. Perhaps they are uncertain of themselves — an awkward moment within a private space. The viewer serves as a kind of voyeur of this intimate situation.
PUBLIC REFLECTION
Walking into Hou Chun-ming’s (侯俊明) Man Hole (男洞) series, as part of his Body Image Series (身體圖), felt like entering a temple dedicated to 13 body images on two-sided paper hung in rows from the ceiling. The subjects are members of the LGBTQ community who the artist met online and agreed to draw a self-portrait on the white side of the paper hung from ceiling, while the artist gives his own representation of them on the other side. The result is an image of how the subjects perceive themselves and how they are perceived by the artist.
The exhibition offers a glimpse of the LGBTQ story — one that remains largely misunderstood by broader public. It may or may not diminish the public divide on the touchy subject of same-sex marriage and rights, but I can understand the community’s desire to be allowed the same privileges many take for granted, to love and be loved without boundaries and arbitrary limits.
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
RSS